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No touch screens, no telemetry, no cellular modems, no wifi, no apps, no subscriptions, no infotainment.
No camera filming me please.
this post was submitted on 18 May 2026
110 points (96.6% liked)
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I just think they're neat!
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Manual Gears (5 speed)!
And a cool loud exhaust to attract women.
Do EVs even have transmissions? I ask this legitimately, I know shit for dick about cars beyond how to change oil
They gave one drive reduction gear, just one speed, no shifting.
On a broader note, this is a failure of capitalism in which products can never be perfected.
There are sooo many technologies that we fully figured out years ago but they can’t just make it optimal and move on.
This is why we have washing machines using internet for whatever reason.
Braindead take. ICE cars all do the exact same shit. This stuff has NOTHING to do with the powertrain of a vehicle.
Nobody said that ev's have that shit because they're evs. It's a new car thing, and unfortunately there aren't many electric cars that are old enough to not have this stuff (ignoring Tesla, since they kinda started the trend and and also because they're nazis).
Tesla started this because they oversold EVs for years on the highest profit margins in the industry. They filled the cars with gadgets and screens to add the perception of value because car buyers are morons.
Older ones aren't so bad. Too bad we don't have EVs without the "smart" stuff.
Hitting the gas in an EV is like filming with a digital camera.
Yeah. Gas [pedal] is used here in the same way the "save" icon is still a floppy disk.
I would also like "turn" please
Backed by amazon? LOL if you think it won't still have a cellular radio and full tracking suite installed.
Slate has stated that they will not have a cellular or other type of connection. It does need some type of connection to do software updates, and that will be from your phone using their app to the truck via USB.
They've also stated they won't track your driving data. You can opt in to share data about the truck's health through the app for servicing purposes, but that's all. They've also promised not to sell any kind of data to third parties.
That could always change, but I'm on the wait list for one and there are people on the slate forums who are serious about privacy and are watching this and seem pretty happy for now.
Slate is the 2nd best choice rn.
First best is buying an older car for cheap and spending some money to repair/upgrade
Yeah, I've been watching that. It is supposed to start fulfilling orders this year (last I read anyway), but it'll be at least next year before I can probably look into one. And even then, I'd want to let some other/braver people test them out for reliability and repair-ability.
I don't like the idea of not having a decent screen for Carplay but I think the upside of this one compared to many other vehicles is that it won't depreciate as badly. No infotainment to go out of date, etc.
I'm quite excited for the Slate to be released. Electric truck, optional SUV conversion, decent price, minimum frills, customize it yourself if that's your thing. That sounds so much better than wheeled tank with built-in privacy concerns.
Cars also need to be smaller for the sustainable transition. We need to disconnect ego from car. Consider it's spending about 95% of its life parked.
I think those days are coming to an end, especially now that gas is expensive everyone is buying up the older evs that dont have those things like the older Chevy bolts
Chevy Bolts have almost every piece of modern tech in cars. Display screens, limited physical dials and buttons, car and pedestrian sensors, cameras everywhere (though luckily none in the cabin facing the inside), GPS, OnStar, and data telemetry. The last two can at least be mitigated by terminating the data line antenna cables to stop the car from phoning home all the time.
if you’re american isn’t that the chevy bolt?
The bolt has buttons and no real smart features but it also has an infotainment tablet. It also still has gps and Wi-Fi and whatever else as options, so I don't particularly trust it not to be tracking everything. It's certainly miles better than most of the competition but it's still a modern car.
As I understand it, one of the other advantages of the bolt is that it's fairly easy to disconnect. There's a dedicated fuse you can pull which will disable the telemetry as well as the microphone and a lot of the related infotainment system functions like gps. Or for those who want more of those functions, you can open the panel behind the screen, unplug the antenna, and replace it with with a terminator so that it thinks it's intact but has no signal.
Of course, it will still try to send data home through your phone if you let it. Apparently it can do that through android auto and carplay if they are connected via bluetooth but not over USB.
There are guides to disabling OnStar effectively which should assuage those concerns. Well, for the 23 and older models. Not sure about the new stuff.
A quick terminator on the cellular antenna makes it receive no cell signal - the other features that don't rely on cellular all continue working.
Chevy Bolts have almost every piece of modern tech in cars. Display screens, limited physical dials and buttons, car and pedestrian sensors, cameras everywhere (though luckily none in the cabin facing the inside), GPS, OnStar, and data telemetry. The last two can at least be mitigated by terminating the data line antenna cables to stop the car from phoning home all the time.
There are quite a few EVs that satisfy those criteria on the market!
e-bikes are such a wild west of manufacturers. what's a good resource to get good reviews?
That's easy: they are all garbage.
There are so many issues to consider. Who makes the motor? Who makes the battery? Will you still be able to buy that battery in 5 years? Will it still work if the company that sold it goes out of business? You can get cheap Chinese e-bikes for 1/4 the cost of American-branded e-bikes. But, sometimes the American ones are just Chinese ones with a sticker slapped on that doubles the price.
From what I've been able to figure out, motors made by Bafang and batteries made by Bafang or Samsung are thought to be ones that should still be around in a few years.
Then there are all the other issues to consider: hub drive or mid-drive? Pedal assist or throttle? Rear derailleur, internally geared hub, or continuously variable transmission?
I've been thinking of getting one and am ready to part with my money, but I can't justify the price of some of the North-American / European labelled bikes, but don't want to waste money on a Chinese one that might only work for a few weeks.
I bought the Kona (2024) and it's the best car I could ask for. It has some smart things of course, but I have no subscriptions, no phone requirement, I mostly just listen to FM radio. It's been the best car I've ever owned.
Features look nice. I guess I'm just gonna have to get over my "crossover" hate and buy a car that looks like a low-top roller skate lol.
I like my Kia EV6. We were in the market for an EV and test drove all of the ones we could try. I liked the KIA because it had a lot of physical buttons for my regular things. There's no real subscriptions except for things we don't use. There's a touchscreen for a lot but I can get by without using it mostly
Kia allows you to disable data acquiring in options.
Oh. I should do that in my car. Love that
We tried to find a small EV everywhere. Bolt was sluggish and had weird controls, leat just hasn't been updated in 10 years, and so we landed on the kona. Definitely larger than we wanted, but batteries are big. At least worth a test drive I'd suggest
I had the opposite experience between the bolt and the Kona! The smaller bolt is a bit faster and I found drove more on the car side of the car/SUV split than the kona, and while the button placement took getting used to it has one for almost everything. We also bought while the tax credits were in effect so it was $10k cheaper for 4 miles less range.
Renault 5, soon Twingo and VW ID.Polo. Hyundai Inster ... at least in Europe. I guess in the US they'd rather sell you some oversized childcrusher instead of giving customers reasonably oriced compact options.
Yup, pretty much. Those were the only three "small" versions, everything else was giant SUV sized.
That's dire. In Europe a lot of new compact EVs have been coming on the market in 2025 and 2026. Manufacturer's finally got the message. They even started to bring prices down with no nonsense offers. I just had a look, not even VW wants to sell its new ID.Polo in the US. You know, finally VW is building good cars with good interior again, after having gotten rid of the remaining traces of the "copy all the Tesla nonsense" disease and then they don't even attempt to sell them in the US.
Also no Hyundai Ioniq 3, no Opel Corsa Electric (or other Stellantis variants), Cupra Raval, Mini Cooper SE, or some of the Chinese offers (BYD Dolphin, Firefly Firefly, Dongfeng Box etc)? But there is the Fiat 500e on the market, isn't it?
leat just hasn't been updated in 10 years
I thought I read it got a fairly big update recently. I'll have to check on that when I have some time.
There have been three generations of leaf, updated 2017 and 2025. Now 225 miles range with active temp control for battery.
Nissan has sold over 650,000 leaves.
I was searching a few years ago, so makes sense they'd update it right after I got mine
I think that was this year, so in 2024 it was super outdated but it's better now. I think it's also a crossover now unfortunately
The leaf JUST got updated finally after they made the Ariya (much bigger, already discontinued because it wasn’t profitable enough.)
But yeah I think if anyone wants ANY new car without any of those features, good luck. You’re required to have a screen for a backup camera for anything since I think 2012? So there’s gonna at minimum be something.